A Timeline of the Future 696
The Night Watchman writes: "Ian Pearson, a British futurist, has produced a sort of timeline of the future, which provides a simultaneously hopeful and bleak look into the coming decades. Mr. Pearson has evidently had a fairly high success rate; a timeline he produced in 1991 was about 85% accurate. An article on Yahoo news has a summary." Reader ricst lists some of Pearson's predictions: "People have some virtual friends, but don't know which ones (2007), leisure activities for intelligent software entities released (2015), electronic lifeform given basic rights (2020)." Brought to you by a division of British Telecom, but no date is set for when they win their hyperlink patent suit.
Re:Extinct Animal (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Extinct Animal (Score:1, Informative)
The Signposts Document (Score:5, Informative)
Main site:
http://kurellian.tripod.com/spint.html [tripod.com]
Storage site:
http://members.aol.com/kurellian/spint.html [aol.com]
~A.
Other stuff by this guy (Score:2, Informative)
European mirror (also a HTML version available) (Score:3, Informative)
PDF - http://liquid.student.utwente.nl/files/mirrors/WP
HTML - http://liquid.student.utwente.nl/files/mirrors/WP
Better List (Score:3, Informative)
So what (Score:3, Informative)
Michio Kaku has a better timeline to the future in his book Visions.
Anyone who doubts should check out that book at amazon.com
I wont quote whats in the book because i bet i'd be sued for copyright violations or something, but it basically says, Humans will reach nano technology, and quantum revolution within maybe 20-30 years,definately within our lifetimes because silicon wont last beyond 2020.
It goes as far as 2100 and beyond M.Kaku interviewed and speaks to hundreds of other scientists, engineers and people in the know.
Now, as far as if we ever reach the year 2100,thats up to us, so far our society doesnt look like it can handle the technology we are developing, look at the DCMA, and the patent laws, its not like patents will work anymore in the future once technology gets to such a state as described by futurists.
Korea/Taiwan investing Trillions? (Score:2, Informative)
The entire United States economy is just a hair over 9 trillion dollars with the United States Federal Budget coming in at 3 trillion.
GDP: purchasing power parity - $9.963 trillion
Taiwan has a GDP of 386 billion and South Korea has a GDP of 764 billion.
So I really, reall doubt that any nation in Asia is putting "trillions" in nano technology.
Government funding of science, while helps, is not a sure fire way to get a technology off the ground, as we can see by Fusion and space based laser weapons.
Re:Things that cannot be done (Score:3, Informative)
Um, no. You're probably thinking of the infamous "tachyons", one of the most benighted missteps in theoretical physics ever. It can be shown by relatively basic relativity that, if for one observer, event B occurs after event A but separated by less than the time it would take light to travel from A to B, then there is some observer for whom the time-ordering of A & B is reversed. That is, for some observer moving at constant velocity relative to the first, B occurs first.
So if event A is "I leave Earth" and event B is "I arrive at alpha Centauri", and for one observer, B is (say) two years after A, then for some other observer, B occurs before A. Which means causality flies right out the window: What if you then sent a signal from B to A that is encoded as follows:
You may add such automation as you desire to ensure that we contrary humans don't boggle the experiment. Of course we now have the situation wherein the ship is both sent and not sent, and we seem to be in a bit of a tizzy.
Note that it does not matter what method of FTL travel our ship uses: teleporter, transwarp, pixie dust. All that matters is the fact that the two events (ship leaves Earth, ship arrives at alpha Centauri) are separated in time by less than the light travel time.
Tachyons are bunk because -- besides requiring things like complex mass -- they can't deal with this issue. Other clever physicists have come up with ways that might allow us to cheat: You never exceed light speed, but you shorten the distance between the points using Gen Rel and some "exotic matter". But you still don't beat c
Re:Copyright-Friendly Basic Rights? (Score:2, Informative)
- Chris
You are the victim (Score:3, Informative)
The heisenberg uncertainty principle (In terms of "classical" 1920's quantum mechanics) goes as follows:
a particle has associated to it a "wave function", which at each point of your world has a complex value. The absolute value (squared) of this wave function is interpereted as the probability density that your particle is at that position.
So, for instance, if your wave function has a constant value of 1/2 on the interval from 0 to 2, then you know with certainty that it lies between 0 and 2. And the odds of it living in the region between 0 and 1 is equal to (length of region)*1/2 = 1/2.
For more complicated distributions, you have to integrate to find where the probability of your particle being in a given region.
Now, the notion of having a probability density for position is nothing new. The radical step here is to say that
the probability distribution for a particle's momentum (read: velocity) is the fourrier transform of its postion probability distribution.
So, basically, quantum mechanics tells you how to get the momentum distribution if you're given the position distribution, with some additional data (i.e. the potential, which in my example above is zero).
Geometrically, this process can be described in terms of summing sinusoidal waves of differing frequencies.
So, for instance, a wave with period 1 will correspond to the particle travelling with speed 1. The wave with period 2 will correspond to the particle travelling with speed 1/2 (squared?--I forgot), etc. If you add the two waves together, you'll have a particle which will have a 50% chance of travelling at speed 1 and a 50% chance of travelling at speed 1/2. The function that these two added waves represents is the probability distribution for position.
If you graph the sum of these two waves, you'll find a funny shape which has constructive interference in some places and destructive interference in other places. Typically, it will look like a steep hill near the origin (where cosine is 1), with smaller hills as you go out. By piling on more and more waves, you can get the resuting wave function to be pretty damn steep at the origin, and the outlying hills very small and shallow. This corresponds to a high degree of certainty that the particle can be found near the origin -- but the price paid is using a lot of waves (i.e. many different possible speeds).
In general, the more localized (in space) the wave function, the more waves will be needed to build it up. And with only one sinusoidal wave, you have (basically) no information about where the particle will be.
Heisenberg's uncertainly principle is a count on how many momentum waves are needed to localize a particle within a particular region.
Note that it has nothing to do with whatever tool is used for measurement, or who performs the measurement, or in which geographic location the measurement takes place.
Unfortunately, many pop sci books try to "explain" the principle by claiming that the act of measuring momentum must somehow interfere with position, hence the ambiguity. This is deceitful, since measuring a particle does change it's wave function to the corresponding eigenvector, but heisenberg's uncertainty principle doesn't describe what happens to a particle after measuring it (i.e. the position distribution collapses to a delta function), it describes a relationship between the number of "possible" positions and the number of "possible" momenta the particle has. Little of one implies a lot of the other.
And this ambiguity, far from being an engineering problem, is perhaps the central insight of classical quantum mechanics.
N.B. -- as in all pop-sci accounts, I've told a few lies here. I've ignored units, the issue of continuous vs. discreet eigenvectors, etc. I've muddled speed, momentum, and velocity. But what really bugs me is that the lies which are told in most pop sci accounts are rather fundamental i.e. they want people to believe a theorem or physical insight, and so they "explain" it with some other related insight. The result is that people believe what the books say, but for the wrong reasons. I.e. acceptancy at the price of understanding. Sorry for the rant.
The Orgasmatron exists... (Score:2, Informative)
See, for example: this [theposition.com] or this [wired.com].